Days before the 1967 conflagration in Detroit, siblings Chelle and Lank ready the basement of the home that their folks left to them. They’ve relocated their after-hours party, hoping to offer a good time to folks and make some extra cash.

In Dominique Morisseau’s serious, yet full-of-warmth play “Detroit ’67,” a steep wooden staircase descends into that basement room, with its hatch-mark height chart, a funny-odd painting of a face, a washer, dryer, clothesline and a large painting of a fist.

A temperamental record player interrupts the Temptations and other luminaries of the Motown sound. Skip, skip, skipping as Chelle (Jada Suzanne Dixon) starts to hit a sing-a-long groove. Her brother Lank and his friend Sly show up with a newfangled answer for that problem: an 8-track tape deck.

If Chelle expresses serious doubts about her bro’s investment, it’s likely because Chelle sees Lank (Cajardo Lindsey) as one of those beautiful, unrealistic dreamers. When Lank can’t convince his sister that the 8-track is a smart move, Sly (Frank Taylor Green) chimes in: “Right now, Dukes ranked number one for after-hours joints in Detroit. You tell folks you got somethin’ new to listen to that Motown on, they gonna be pushin’ to get through. Believe it, woman.”

Unlicensed watering holes like the one Chelle and Lank provide were then a staple throughout the Motor City. The vice squad raid of one so-called “blind pig” set off what’s known as the 12th Street or Detroit riots. Or uprising. Or rebellion. The ongoing disagreement over the right (righteous?) description remains to this day. But when the smoldering subsided, 43 people were dead (33 of them African-American); more than 1,000 had been injured; 2,000 buildings had been destroyed; and 7,200 people were arrested.

If Chelle sings along to Motown, friend Bunny lives it. Played with vibrant smarts by Ilasiea Gray, Bunny knows how to make an entrance. Her every ensemble (by Kevin Brainerd) looks like something Diana Ross would don for an album cover shoot, all bold patterns and sharp lines. Chelle is no-nonsense — keeping her eyes on the prize of her son’s college education at Tuskegee. Bunny is finger-snapping knowingness, the embodiment of what would now be push notifications.

Lank’s proper name is Langston Hughes Poindexter. Parents don’t name their sons after the bard of the Harlem Renaissance without harboring a wish for him. Hughes authored the 1951 poem “Harlem” that famously asks “What happens to a dream deferred?” and then provides some bitter answers. One answer became the title of Lorraine Hansberry’s influential drama, “A Raisin in the Sun.” “Detroit ’67” echoes the poem’s final answer. “Or do they explode?”

Morisseau is attuned to her characters’ dreams and disappointments. She’s also keenly thoughtful about the 1960s moment that found black men returning home from Vietnam broken, addicted, angry; a time when police were increasingly cracking down on unlicensed after-hours joints; a moment when middle-class and working-class whites were leaving the city’s neighborhoods for the suburbs. These “issues” get aired in the natural, fleet back and forth between the characters.

As “Detroit ’67” unfolds, the subterranean location gains a kind of metaphorical force. No matter how much Lank hopes to get ahead, to go legit, he’s gonna have a helluva challenge climbing above the race-tinged disadvantages of the times.

Lank and Sly complicate matters when they deposit a woman on the couch one night. They found her barely conscious. She’s been assaulted. And she’s white. Anastasia Davidson portrays the mystery woman who isn’t in a hurry to leave the safety of Chelle and Lank’s basement. She’s not the only catalyst that nudges Chelle and Lank toward disagreements and understandings — Detroit itself plays that role — but she deepens the play’s take on race, power, gender.

As smart as the playwright is in relating the pains and pangs of the gathered, she’s also a loving observer of their pleasures. Which makes “Detroit ’67,” even when we know there’s violence brewing, more than a lament.

“Detroit ’67” offers a clearer window into the mood of the time than last summer’s “Detroit.” Director Kathryn Bigelow and frequent co-writer Mark Boal use the police killings of three black men at the Algiers Motel July 25 to revisit the violence. Although it’s a cinematic punch to the gut, the movie does not clear the hurdles it created for itself. In trying to make white viewers understand the critique of police brutality from #blacklivesmatter, the film re-brutalizes its black characters and, by extension, its audience.

Yes, the events of July ’67 remain wounding and dispiriting, in part because they have been repeated. However, Morisseau’s play and Curious Theatre Company’s production — directed with verve and nuance by Idris Goodwin — is anything but. In addition to the welcome main-stage debuts of Green, Gray and Davidson, “Detroit ’67” puts two local lights front and center. Dixon and Lindsey as sister and brother anchor the play with their sibling reveries and plans, their deep differences and deeper affinity.

In the 2017-18 theater season, Morisseau was among the nation’s most produced playwrights, according to American Theatre magazine’s annual survey. Yet, this is the first production of her work in Colorado.

Lisa Kennedy's film critic job returned her to the town she grew up in after 20 years of living elsewhere: mostly in New York City. During the time she's been back, she was voted into the National Society of Film Critics, a first for a Colorado reviewer.